Starting with a brief introduction
to the German legal system and legal tradition, this article looks at legal
research from a practitioner's point of view and provides an overview of the
major sources for German legal research with a focus on business and commercial
law, both print and online. Due to the wealth of German legal literature it
presents but a selection of the most essential sources and does not make a
claim to comprehensive portrayal or completeness. Most of the materials
mentioned here are in German, as any substantive law research will have to be
conducted in the vernacular. To assist the foreign researcher though,
references have been included to translations of German laws and cases as well
as select literature and Web sites on German law in English. Kommentare
(commentaries) and Festschriften as forms of publication specific to
German legal research are highlighted as is the way German case law is
published and the issues this involves. Extensive coverage is given to legal
databases and their growing importance to the researcher.

It will become clear that, while
there is a wide variety of sources available, materials have not always been
published in a consistent manner. Hence, researchers will find it difficult at
times to locate certain items, notably when it comes to court decisions or
administrative regulations.

Not included here are business
information sources such as commercial and company registers etc which
supplement research in business and commercial law.

Since the 1990s the
number of legal resources accessible electronically or online has grown
considerably. This includes both commercial, fee-based services as well as
sites that are available for free. Special mention should be made of legal
resources offered on government websites and on the homepages of major legal
publishers. A number of materials are made available through collaborative
efforts by the government and database providers, or between several
publishers. Many sources are offered under license by more than one provider.
The growing market with a wide range of products that partly overlap, and
shifting provider collaborations sometimes make it hard for the legal
researcher to keep track. It needs to be said, however, that with Juris, Beck-online,
LexisNexis and Legios there are four strong contenders in the market who bundle
a multitude of sources pivotal in conducting legal research.

At the same time, in
spite of the tremendous growth in the electronic product area, legal print
literature upholds its importance.

1. General Introduction to the
German Legal System

Germany has a federal system of
government built on democratic principles, which is made up of 16 Länder
(federal states), and is a member of the European Union, the association of a
growing number of European states. The Constitution of the Federal Republic of
Germany, which is known as the Basic Law (Grundgesetz)
lies at the foundation of all other legislation. The highest legislative bodies
are the Bundestag and the Bundesrat as the two chambers of
parliament. The Federal Constitutional Court is the highest body of the judiciary,
and the Federal President and Federal Government are the highest bodies of the
state executive. This structure is mirrored at the level of the states
with state parliaments, the state constitutional courts, and state governors
and governments.

German law is governed by the
federal nature of the Federal Republic of Germany and is thus not dissimilar to
legal systems such as the ones in the United States or Australia. However, in
contrast to these jurisdictions, the federal principle is not confined to national
borders, i.e. the relations among the individual states and their
relations towards the Federation. It extends to, and is crucially influenced
by, Germany’s membership of the European Union, which by now affords an
extensive body of legislation that is binding on its individual member states
directly or needs to be implemented in national law. There are basic treaties,
regulations and directives. Bilateral and multilateral agreements between EU
member states are now mostly replaced by EU treaties.

Germany is a civil law
jurisdiction. The law is divided into three major areas: private law, public
law and criminal law.

The sources of the law in Germany
comprise statutory law as the central and primary source which includes the
constitution, statutes and ordinances, regulations, decrees and charters. Court
decisions are another source. However, in contrast to jurisdictions such as the
UK or the US they do not have a precedent function in that courts are not bound
to follow the decisions of higher courts in a previous case. Courts are bound
by the law rather than by precedents. Custom is generally recognized to be yet
another source of the law as are interpretations of the law.

The German legal
tradition and culture go back to the law of the Roman Empire, which made a
strong impact on its emergence and development. German law is codified law. The
idea of codification dates back to the period of
European Enlightenment during the 17th and 18th centuries and, propelled by the
aspirations for unification during the 19th century, resulted in the creation
of law codes for the major areas of the law.1 The development of the law in Germany must also be seen
in the context of similar developments in other parts of continental Europe.
There has always been strong mutual influence and exchange, which is now
culminating in the rapprochement of legal systems as mentioned above.

Codification was first
promoted by the enlightened rulers of Prussia and Austria (Prussia's Allgemeines
Landesrecht of 1794 and Austria's Allgemeines Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch)
as a means for people to know their rights and duties. Another strong impetus
emanated from the adoption in 1804 of the Code Napoleon.

By the time of the
establishment of the German Reich in 1871 there were only two states, Prussia
and Saxony, which had codified their private law. The other German territories
were governed by different types of law from ius commune to Austrian and
Danish law. With the beginning of industrialization and the need for open
markets the unification of the law became an important issue. A draft of a
general German commercial code had been adopted by most of the states in the Deutscher
Bund (German Union) by 1866. Once the German Reich had been founded, the
development of a uniform law code for the whole of Germany took on added
importance. In the years following the founding of the German Reich a
number of laws were adopted in 1879 that set the scene for a common civil code:
The Gerichtsverfassungsgesetz (court statutes), Konkursordnung
(insolvency code), Zivilprozessordnung (code of civil procedure), and
the Strafprozessordnung (code of criminal procedure), which have, with
some amendments, retained their validity to date. With a procedural framework
in place, work on a uniform civil code was begun, which was to take 26 years
from the initial drafting until it took force on January 1, 1900. The
Commercial Code (Handelsgesetzbuch) came into force on the same date.
The Civil Code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch), which comprehensively covers
the field of private law, is the mainstay of the German civil-law system. The
result of fine 19th century scholarship, it is written in a highly technical
language and thus not easily accessible. It has been lauded for its doctrinal
refinement and conceptual abstraction that leaves room for interpretation, but
is not addressed to the lay person. A century after its adoption its
stipulations are still largely the same, the most significant amendments having
been made to the book on family law, which has seen major change,2 and the book on the
law of obligations, major parts of which have been revised by the 2001 reform
of the law of obligations. The German Civil Code has also served as a model for
other countries in developing their civil law codifications. Among them are
Japan and Greece.

Nazi rule during the period from
1933 through 1945 has left deep imprints on the development of the law in
Germany after World War II. Legislative thinking has been guided by the idea of
preventing any such catastrophe from ever happening again.

Another important aspect to be
considered is the reunification on October 3, 1990 of the Federal Republic of
Germany and the former German Democratic Republic. The legal systems had
completely grown apart during the years of division. During the years since
1990 a legal system modeled on the one in the old Federal Republic has been set
up in the eastern part of Germany as well. Under the Unification Treaty,
certain parts of East German law have continued to retain their validity.
Additional laws and regulations had to be enacted in various different fields
of law to cover the specific situation that had arisen out of the joining of
two completely different systems.

The federal legislative process
may involve any of the following bodies: The Bundestag (German
parliament) as the elected representative body of the people, the Bundesrat
as the representative body of the states, the federal government
and the parliamentary committees. Legislative initiative may emanate from the
government, members of Parliament (a parliamentary group, party or other group)
or the Bundesrat. There is legislation that requires approval from the Bundesrat,
e.g., legislation amending the Constitution or touching on the foundations of
the federation, and there is simple legislation that does not require such Bundesrat
approval. Once a bill has been passed, it is countersigned by the
government minister in charge and the Federal Chancellor, executed by the
Federal President and promulgated in the Bundesgesetzblatt (Federal Law
Gazette). Unless otherwise stipulated, it will enter into force on the 14th day
after publication in the Federal Law Gazette. Ordinances are passed by the
Executive, i.e. the federal government or federal ministers. Bundesrat
approval is required if they affect the interests of the states.
The legislative procedure on the federal level is explained in detail on the
Web site of the German
Bundestag.

Documents that are produced and
published as part of the legislative process do not only comprise the texts of
prospective new laws or statutory amendments. They also include the reasoning
of the bodies initiating such legislation, which may be used as a source for
construing the future law.

Important preliminary
draft bills used to be accessible to a wider interested public only in print
and by placing a request with the respective government ministry. Major
legislative projects were published in journals. Now they have begun to be
published on the home pages of the government ministries in charge of the
legislative project or can be accessed through the link to legislative
projects (Gesetzesvorhaben und Neuregelungen) on the home page of the
German Federal Government.

The official
legislative process is triggered by a bill being submitted by either the
Bundesrat, the Federal Government or a parliamentary group within the
Bundestag. This process, i.e. the passage of the bill through all chambers of
parliament, is accompanied by a large number of documents. The full text of
draft bills, complete with reasoning, and amendments proposed by the
parliamentary committees is published in Bundestags-Drucksachen or Bundesrats-Drucksachen
(Printed Matters of the Bundestag and Bundesrat), a serial publication of the
Bundestag and Bundesrat, respectively. The debates of bills in the Bundestag and Bundesrat
are recorded in the minutes of plenary sessions (Stenographische Berichte
des Deutschen Bundestages and Stenographische Berichte des Deutschen
Bundesrates, also called Plenarprotokolle). These sources are indexed in the Register
zu den Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestags und des Bundesrats (Index to
the Sessions of the German Bundestag and Bundesrat), a publication of the
German Parliament’s department of documentation. It has appeared as a bound set
at the end of each parliamentary term since 1949. Materials of parliamentary
terms (starting from 1972) are also published in bound sets by Nomos and
Bundesanzeiger publishers.

Much of this information
is now available on the Internet through DIP
(short for Dokumentations- und Informationssystem für Parlamentarische
Vorgänge – Documentation and Information System for Parliamentary
Activities), a gateway to parliamentary information set up by the German
Bundestag. It provides free online access to legislative materials, including the
full text of draft bills as published in the Bundestags-Drucksachen,
and all other documents of the legislative history, with full texts of
parliamentary printed matter, and links to the full text of Part I of the Bundesgesetzblatt (Federal Law Gazette starting from
1998). DIP also provides information on initiatives that require approval by
the Bundesrat or, if applicable, on EU Directives that need to be
implemented by a particular law, as well as the minutes of plenary sessions,
activities of members of the Bundestag and Bundesrat, and information on
parliamentary activities starting from the 8th parliamentary term (i.e. late
1976).

It should be noted that
the content of DIP is accessed through two separate gateways with different
search interfaces: one for the 8th-15th parliamentary
terms and one for the 16th,, i.e. the current and future parliamentary
terms. 16th term: subject index and three search interfaces (searchable
by consultation processes, activities, and documents) / 8-15th term:
variety of search interfaces graded by level of difficulty).

Alternatively, there is the Parlamentsspiegel
parliamentary database, an initiative launched by the 16 German state
parliaments, which covers the federal materials published in the Bundestags-
and Bundesrats-Drucksachen for approximately the same period as DIP, as
well as the legislative materials of the states (see below at 2.2). Minutes of plenary
sessions of the Bundesrat are available from as early as the 1st
parliamentary term. DIP provides access to some of the full text data from Parlamentsspiegel
by linking to that information. In documenting printed matters at federal
level, Parlamentsspiegel primarily covers Bundesrat materials, the reason being
that the Bundesrat is the representation of Germany’s federal states. A list of
the federal data it covers can be found here.
Parlamentsspiegel is the source to use for federal law research before
2002. Research after that date should be conducted in DIP. Inquiries regarding
federal legislative materials not published in DIP or Parlamentsspiegel
(up to the 7th parliamentary term in 1976) can be directed to Sach-und
Sprechregister des Deutschen Bundestages, the official documentation
center of the German Parliament (phone no. +49-30-227 3 23 50/E-mail); materials in print and electronic
formats can also be ordered from the document service of Bundesanzeiger
Verlag, the Bonn-based official parliamentary and government publisher.

The documents created as part of
the legislative process at the Länder or state levels are published in
print format. Some states make legislative materials available on their
internet homepages as well.Despite some major progress, a number of federal states
still do not put these materials online, The ones available vary in content,
scope and ease of searching. Given this situation, all the more importance
attaches to the Parlamentsspiegel,
which makes it its goal to build an integrated parliamentary information
system. The Internet version was launched in 2000. It is based on the Parlamentsspiegel
print version (1957-1994/95) which has been discontinued.

The printed matters of
the federal states currently available are listed here.
Two of the 16 states (Baden-Wurttemberg and Hesse) dropped out of the project
in early 2004, which meant a substantial setback to the importance of this
database as a comprehensive tool. An overview of internet homepages of the
different federal states and the state materials accessible there can be found
on the Parlamentsspiegel
website.

If state legislative materials cannot
be found either on the respective states’ homepages or in the Parlamentsspiegel
database, they will have to be obtained directly, usually for a fee, from the
respective departments of the state parliaments.

Germany’s federal system is
reflected in the law. Legislative power is shared between the Federation and
the Länder (states). When it comes to legal issues that need to be
regulated uniformly for all states, exclusive legislative power rests with the
Federation. This includes foreign affairs, defence, transportation, the legal
protection of industrial property rights, copyright, post and
telecommunications, etc. Concurrent legislation applies to fields of law which,
although uniform regulation for the federation is required, allow for state
legislation as well. State legislation is repealed, however, if a federal law
exists or is enacted in the same respect (e.g., civil code, criminal law, business
and labor law, certain aspects of tax law). Federal laws may be supplemented by
state laws when additional legal issues need to be covered and require
augmentation by state law. Framework legislation, i.e. general guiding
directives, is provided by the federation for certain areas that will have to
be fleshed out by state laws. This applies to higher education, the protection
of nature and soil, the water balance, and urban planning.

Laws at federal and state levels
are adopted through the official legislative process described above. The body
of statutory materials also comprises ordinances (Rechtsverordnungen)
issued by the Executive (the federal or state governments) on the basis of an
enacted law, and municipal orders and ordinances adopted by the local
authorities. Further, there are administrative rules and regulations issued by
the Executive, which serve to interpret the law. As for the latter, we will
consider here generally applicable administrative regulations by federal or
state authorities that require publication.

The Federal Law Gazette (Bundesgesetzblatt),
Parts I and II, is the official source of Germany’s valid laws, of most
subordinate legislation and ordinances (Rechtsverordnungen), and of
important notices. It is published in print and online by Bundesanzeiger
publishers on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Justice (Bundesgesetzblatt -
BGBl. Bonn: Bundesanzeiger, 1949-).

New federal laws and major ordinances
and amendments thereof have appeared in Part I since 1949. Issues of the print
version are published, as required, approximately 50 times per year.

Part II publishes the
international agreements concluded by the Federal Republic of Germany, and
national laws and orders adopted for their validation and enforcement (also see
3.2 below). The text is usually provided in
German and in the official languages of the agreement.

A discontinued Part III of the Bundesgesetzblatt,
which used to be published in looseleaf format, contains a consolidated
compilation of Germany’s federal laws as amended at the time of publication
between 1958 and 1969. Because of the complicated legal situation that had
arisen after World War II with laws from the German Reich still in force, and
new laws and decrees enacted by the Allied Powers and, later, the German
parliament, the German legislators decided to review German laws and repeal
obsolete statutes. The beginning and end of this process were marked by the
adoption of two laws (Gesetz über die Sammlung des Bundesrechts of July
10, 1958 and Gesetz über den Abschluß der Sammlung des Bundesrechts of
December 28, 1968). This compilation is still useful today in researching older
versions of the law.

The Federal Law Gazetteis
available online in German through the following services:

Valid federal law is officially
indexed in Fundstellennachweis A (FNA), an indispensable
tool in accessing the statutory materials of Bundesgesetzblatt I. It
features a subject, keyword and abbreviations index and an index of valid laws
of the former German Democratic Republic and related federal laws, with a
separate keyword index. Fundstellennachweis A is published by the
Federal Ministry of Justice at the beginning of each year, with a mid-year
supplement. It appears in print (light blue supplement to Bundesgesetzblatt), as
a CD-ROM and online. For any classical federal law research using print sources
Fundstellennachweis A will be the first "port of call."

Fundstellennachweis B (FNB) is the official
index of Bundesgesetzblatt II (see above and below at 3.2) and published in print (red supplement to
Bundesgesetzblatt) and online.

Alternatively, the Bundesgesetzblatt
Gesamtregister (Comprehensive Index to the Federal Law Gazette)
covering Parts I and II from 1949 - 2000 indexes the valid law and, in
addition, laws and ordinances that have gone out of force. It was published in
cooperation with C.H. Beck (last edition in 2001/2002). By contrast, when laws
are amended, the Fundstellennachweis indexes sources of the old versions
for the last time in the year of amendment.

While publishing amendments, Bundesgesetzblatt
I does not usually provide consolidated or revised versions of laws. The
complete text of the new law as amended is only published in the event of
landmark changes (e.g., anti-trust law as revised in 1998). For this reason, Bundesgesetzblatt
I is not a convenient tool for practical law research if a law has been
amended multiple times.

Consolidated versions
of the law (for a selection see below) are
offered in a wide range of publications from various German legal publishers,
who publish the German federal laws complete or by subject area. Many of these
are also available electronically, on CD-ROM or online, as a free or fee-based
service. Texts found in unofficial publications by commercial vendors should be
checked for their currency against Bundesgesetzblatt I.

3.1.2 Bundesanzeiger

Ordinances are also
officially published in Bundesanzeiger (BAnz), a publication of the
Federal Ministry of Justice. Commercial vendors who publish these materials
online include Makrolog
– Recht für Deutschland(starting from 2001) and GBI/Genios (starting from 2003).

3.1.3 Federal Tax
Gazette (Bundessteuerblatt – BStBl)

Federal tax legislation
is officially published in Bundessteuerblatt, the official
publication of the Federal Ministry of Finance (Federal Tax Gazette -
BStBl, Stollfuss, 1951-; also on CD-ROM, 1992- with online updates). Like
Bundesgesetzblatt, it appears in two parts: Part I includes federal tax laws as
well as federal ordinances and administrative rules and regulations. Decisions
of the Federal Tax Court (Bundesfinanzhof) are published in Part II.

Makrolog – Recht für
Deutschlandoffers online access to the full texts of BStBl I and II complete from
1951, as well as of BStBl III with tax rulings from 1951 to 1967.

The official
publication for most laws and ordinances prior to 1945 were the Reichsgesetzblatt
and Reichsanzeiger, the predecessors to Bundesgesetzblatt and Bundesanzeiger.

Parallel to the Bundesgesetzblatt,
East Germany published the Gesetzblatt der DDR (Law Gazette of the
German Democratic Republic) from 1949-1990. As some former East German laws are
still valid, this source may be of some relevance as well.

Commercial online publishers of
German statutes beyond the ones mentioned above include the following:

The foremost commercial
database of German federal law is Juris
(also see below at 8.1). First established in the
early 1970s one of its goals has been to document the development of the law
over time. It covers federal and state laws, rules and regulations, EU law,
case law, journal articles, press announcements on high court decisions,
industrial bargaining agreements, and technology law. Federal laws are covered
in full text, however, starting from different points in time. All versions of
a law since that time are available in full text, including the texts of laws
from the Reichsgesetzblatt and other official statutory publications
prior to the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany that are still in
force. juris also gives citations to much older texts. It perceives its mission
as offering consolidated versions of laws including historical versions, to the
extent they have been documented. In this respect, juris is currently the
first, and in terms of its scope, single choice. Its Bundesrecht
(Federal Law) database feeds on information from the Federal Ministry of
Justice and, in the field of tax, from the Federal Ministry of Finance. It
holds valid federal laws based on Fundstellennachweis A as well as
previous versions of federal laws and ordinances, including the laws and
regulations of the former German Democratic Republic still in force.

Access to the
consolidated federal statutes including their historical versions, the
Bundestag Drucksachen (printed matters) and the Bundesgesetzblatt, both
beginning from the 15th parliamentary term, is also provided through
the fee-based legislation portal Gesetzesportal
launched by juris in association with Bundesanzeiger
publishers in 2007.

Beck-online, the fee-based legal database
service of C.H. Beck, the No. 1 legal publisher in Germany, features a large
federal law collection, based on its ubiquitous looseleaf services, and in
addition 3,000 statutes and ordinances from the Nomos federal law database,
augmented by a collection of state laws (see below at 8.2).
beck-online has started to include older versions of laws, with a selection
starting from 2000 now available.

Das Deutsche Bundesrechtby Nomos publishers is
another commercial product accessible via the Internet (20 updates per year;
annual subscription or chip account; also available as a looseleaf service with
monthly updates, and on CD-ROM with four updates per year). It offers complete
coverage of current federal laws (including laws of the former East Germany
still in force), based on Bundesgesetzblatt I, as well as select ordinances.
It is also offered through beck-online
(cf. above), with annotations of a number of laws as an added feature.

LexisNexis
Recht,
relatively new to Germany as a legal database provider, has established itself
in the German legal information market among others by acquiring MBO publishers
and obtaining licenses from other German publishers. Its legislation database,
based on MBO content, covers about 8,000 federal rules of law, a wide selection
of EU laws, and, almost completely, the laws of the 16 federal states.

Further providers of statutes
databases include

·Makrolog - Recht für Deutschland in cooperation with
Boorberg and Deubner publishers (some 2,000 consolidated federal statutes; also
accessible from the Federal Law Gazette) and

·Legios, a database maintained by Otto Schmidt publishers (some 600 EU and
German federal and state statutes, based on Boorberg publishers’ content).

3.1.6 Free Law Portals

The German
Federal Government and juris in a joint
project named Gesetze im
Internet (Statutes on the Internet) have undertaken to put online
major laws which fall within the sphere of competence of the Federal Government
Ministries. They are offered as unofficial versions and can be accessed by
subject, alphabetically and by ministry (the latter with a free-text search
option). Also included is an English translation by a team of translators at Langenscheidt publishers of the First
and Second Books of the German
Civil Code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch).

A cooperation between the Ministry
of Justice of North Rhine/Westphalia (NRW) and LexisNexis has resulted in the
free Web portal justiz-online
featuring a selection of approx. 3,000 laws and regulations, both federal and
of all 16 states with a focus on NRW. These materials are updated monthly.

For international treaties and
agreements concluded by the Federal Republic of Germany to take effect
nationally, a federal law needs to be enacted. The legislative process is
recorded in the DIP and Parlamentsspiegel databases mentioned above at 2.1.

The official publication for
Germany’s international treaties since 1951 is Bundesgesetzblatt Teil II
(BGBl. II), which publishes both the international treaty or agreement
concluded and the related federal law (available from the Web as a fee-based
serviced at this site). Parlamentsspiegel and Das Deutsche Bundesrechtpublish a selection.

The materials published in Bundesgesetzblatt
II and its predecessor, Reichsgesetzblatt Teil II, are indexed in Fundstellennachweis
B (cf. above at 3.1.1). It also provides
an index of other signatory states. Other access tools include the Bundesgesetzblatt
Gesamtregister (Comprehensive Index to the Federal Law Gazette) as well as
a number of commercial looseleaf publications.

The laws of the European Union increasingly influence
the national laws of all its member states. This applies to the Federal
Republic of Germany as well, which was among the founding members in 1951.
National laws in EU countries often implement EU directives, and it is
therefore necessary to check for applicable EU law. EU regulations apply
directly. Without going into the details of EU law research, the major sources
from a German perspective shall be mentioned here.

EU treaties and their
amendments, which constitute primary EU law, are published in the Official
Journal Series L and in the CELEX
(free service no longer updated since 2005) and EUR-Lex databases, as are EU
directives and regulations once they have been passed into law. For Germany, EU
legislation of crucial import is also published in Bundesgesetzblatt II.

Series C of the
Official Journal publishes promulgations and drafts of directives and
regulations as well as Commission documents. Both series appear in print and,
for the past few years, in CD-ROM format (distributed in Germany by Bundesanzeiger Verlag). Free issues of
the Official Journal are available online from EUR-Lex from
1998 to date. The German version of the European Union law databases
CELEX/EUR-Lex is offered via juris. Some of
the major directives and regulations can be found in Parlamentsspiegel. However,
documentation of EU law was discontinued in 2001.

beck-online recently released its EU law
module comprising EU laws and decisions underpinned by commentaries and
handbooks.

German print sources on EU law
include the Handbuch des europäischen Rechts (European Law Handbook), a
looseleaf service with monthly updates which covers EU treaties with comments,
as well as communications, directives, and regulations. Sartorius II:
Internationale Verträge und Europarecht includes EU treaties and other EU
texts.

EU case law is available in full
text from the web site of the European Court of
Justice (from 1997), or via EUR-Lex and the fee-based CELEX database. The
official print publication for EU cases is the Sammlung der Rechtsprechung
des Europäischen Gerichtshofs, which covers the decisions of the European
Court of Justice since 1954. A number of commercial services are available as
well.

3.3 State Laws and
Subordinate Legislation

3.3.1 Print Sources

All German states publish their
enacted state laws and ordinances in state law gazettes
and gazettes of ordinances (the old states starting from 1947 and the new
states of the former East Germany from 1990). The publishing authority may vary
from one state to another and can be the state parliament, the ministry of the
interior or ministry of justice, or others. In addition, most of the states
publish administrative gazettes with administrative rules and ordinances.
Consolidated versions are available in looseleaf format or on CD-ROM.

Some states such as Bavaria, which
existed before World War II, published law gazettes as early as then. The laws
of such states were revised after the war as necessary. In the 1950s most
German states published compilations of revised laws to reflect the changes and
amendments that had been made after World War II.

Commercial publishers put out
consolidated compilations of state laws in looseleaf format. One of the major
names to be mentioned here is C.H. Beck.

Major tools for accessing both
federal and state legislation include the following:

·Schlegelberger,
Franz/Friedrich,Walther, Das Recht der Gegenwart, a looseleaf service
published by Vahlen publishers, which indexes state and federal laws by keyword
(one complete update at the beginning of each year).

·The
weekly Sammelblatt für Rechtsvorschriften des Bundes und der Länder,
issued in journal format since 1950 with semi-annual indexes. It publishes the
full-text of nearly all federal laws and major state laws and ordinances and
references the complete tables of contents of the state law gazettes, of Bundesgesetzblatt
I and II, and the Bundesanzeiger.

3.3.2 Online Sources

·Parlamentsspiegel provides free online
access to most state law gazettes through one gateway. Complete records are
currently available for North-Rhine Westphalia only.

An overview of the state law
gazettes included in Parlamentsspiegel can be found here.

Most federal states provide online
access to their state law gazettes in one way or another, some for free and
some fee-based. An excellent overview is available from the joint portal of the
Federal Ministry of Justice and the Justice Departments of the states at Justizportal
des Bundes und der Länder.

Besides federal laws,
current versions of laws and ordinances of some or all states are accessible
through juris (14 states), beck-online (all states), and LexisNexis Recht (all states).

3.4 Federal Administrative Rules and Regulations

Universally binding administrative
rules and regulations are published in Bundesanzeiger, and in Gemeinsames
Ministerialblatt (Joint Gazette of the Government Ministries), a
publication of the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The latter has published
since 1950 the federal administrative rules and regulations of various federal
ministries.

In addition, there are
publications on certain areas of the law, such as the Bundesarbeitsblatt
(Federal Labor Law Gazette) published by the Federal Ministry of Labor or the Bundessteuerblatt
(Federal Tax Gazette) of the Federal Ministry of Finance.

juris
offers the full text of tax administrative rules and regulations (from 1978),
both federal and of the 16 states, and abstracts and citations of
administrative rules and regulations for labor law (from 1986) and social
welfare law (from 1954), in addition the administrative rules and regulations
of Bavaria, Rhineland-Palatinate, and Schleswig-Holstein (Thuringia is
currently under preparation). This will tremendously facilitate legal research
in this field, all the more so because they are to be cross-referenced with
statutory laws and major court decisions.

As of recently, the German
government in association with juris have set up an internet portal for federal
administrative rules and regulations (Verwaltungsvorschriften
im Internet) giving the general public free access to current
administrative rules and regulations issued by various federal government
ministries. These are “living documents”, meaning that they are continuously
updated by the competent federal authorities.

Finding federal administrative
rules and regulations outside of the juris databases can be very tedious. One
may have to fall back on statutory compilations and commentaries, which
frequently provide footnote references to the relevant administrative rules.

3.5 State Administrative Rules and Regulations

The administrative
rules and regulations of the states are published in print form in official
gazettes of different types. juris has offered the full text of tax regulations
and citations to employment law regulations as a fee-based service for quite
some time. However, as with federal rules and regulations, completeness is a
issue.

Beck-online has started to give
increasing coverage to federal and state administrative rules and regulations,
among others by offering its standard title Praxis der Kommunalverwaltung
as a fee-based online service.

A number of states have
put some of the relevant materials on the Internet. In January 2008 these
included:

·Baden
Württemberg: free state law service in cooperation with juris including current
administrative rules.

·Bavaria: free state law
database for non-commercial use in cooperation with juris including some
administrative rules and regulations; fee-based service via Juris covering all administrative rules and
regulations valid and published as per January 1, 2007 and those that became
invalid after that date.

·Rhineland-Palatinate: free service in
cooperation with juris including a core full-text service of a large number of
major current administrative rules and regulations as currently valid for
personal use (print and download); fee-based service via juris covering all administrative rules valid
and published as per November 1, 2006 and all those that became invalid after
that date.

·Saxony: REVOSax free state law service
including administrative rules and regulations.

·Schleswig-Holstein: free state law
service in cooperation with juris including a list of current administrative
rules and regulations; fee-based service via juris
covering the full text of all administrative rules and regulations published in
the official gazette of the state ministry of the interior since 1950 including
directives, circulars, and notifications.

As with federal rules and
regulations, the legal researcher will frequently have to fall back on
statutory compilations and commentaries to find references to such rules and
regulations. Contacting the respective state ministries of justice may also
prove helpful.

Select Literature and Databases:

Official Publications and Indexes
of Federal Laws and Regulations (Print and CD-ROM):

·Bundesgesetzblatt
I and II.
Bonn:
Bundesanzeiger Verlag, 1949- (annual CD-ROM edition: Part I since 1998, Part II
since 1999); online cf below at Databases of
Federal Law

·Gesetze im Internet (Federal Laws on the
Internet): Free service to the public provided by the Federal Ministry of
Justice in cooperation with juris; features the current consolidated versions
of nearly all federal laws.

·Makrolog – Recht für Deutschland: Part free, part
fee-based online service offering the Federal Law Gazette and other official
compilations/law gazettes such as the Federal Tax Gazette, the Reich Law
Gazette and the Law Gazette of the former German Democratic Republic (fee-based
service with complete coverage of all gazettes; free read-only service of the
Federal Law Gazette Part I from 2003 excluding the last four weeks after
registration at this site.
Makrolog offers a number of options
for subscriptions including a direct purchase option by credit card for
individual documents.

·Bundesanzeiger
Verlag: free
read-only versions of the Federal Law Gazette I and II (Part I from 1998, Part
II from 2002) here. The
fee-based service by the same provider contains all issues of the Federal Law
Gazette, Parts I and II, since the launch of the print versions in 1949 and
1951, respectively.

The fundamental legal provisions
underlying court practice and adjudication in the Federal Republic of Germany
can be found in Articles 92 and 93 of the Basic Law. The structure of the court
system follows the federal principle with courts at the federal and at state
levels.

The Federal Constitutional Court
holds a special position and, as an organ of the constitution, is the highest
German court and an independent court of the Federal Republic. It rules
exclusively on constitutional issues. The Federal Constitutional Court is
complemented by constitutional courts in the federal states.

Besides the constitutional courts,
there are the following major categories of jurisdiction: There is ordinary
jurisdiction which falls into civil and criminal jurisdiction with local,
regional and higher regional courts (Amtsgerichte, Landgerichte,
Oberlandesgerichte) at the state level, and, at federal leve, the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of
Justice - BGH) as the highest court. Furthermore, there is administrative,
fiscal, labor and social jurisdiction with courts at regional, higher
regional, and federal levels. The regional and higher regional courts are, at
the same time, courts of appeal of their respective states. There is a Joint
Panel of the Highest Federal Courts which acts as a supreme body of
jurisdiction across all court levels and jurisdictions and decides on issues of
divergent adjudication by other courts. Its authority is, however, largely
restricted and cannot be compared to that of a (Federal) Supreme Court in other
countries (as, for example, in the United States). Courts are divided into
panels and divisions based on areas of law.

German courts of all levels pass a
total of about 4.5 to 5 million decisions per year. Each case is assigned a case
number that reflects the type of court, level of appeal, and subdivision. The
case number and date are of great importance in citing and finding cases. When
a court decision is published, it is preceded by a summary, comparable to
headnotes, authored by judges, press departments with the courts, or the
editorial board of the publishing journal. As a rule, the names of the parties
involved are not mentioned.

Court decisions by the highest
courts are most completely recorded in print format in various quasi-official reporters put together by the judges of the
respective courts. They are published in the large legal publishing houses,
however, with much delay.

Legal journals are usually much faster in publishing court decisions.
Some of them have specialized almost entirely in the publication of cases, and
publish decisions of regional and higher regional courts as well (e.g.,
NJW-Rechtsprechungs-Report, NZA-Rechtsprechungs-Report, NVwZ-Rechtsprechungs-Report).
Many of them also appear on CD-ROM. Aside from quasi-official compilations,
there are various commercial publications of court decisions, at both federal
and state levels, most of them in looseleaf format, but also on CD-ROM, and focused
on specific fields of law. Two of the major ones are listed below.

Commercial publishers have set up
databases of court decisions to be made accessible via the World Wide Web,
either based on existing print versions or by cooperating with other providers.
This market has undergone fundamental changes since the late 1990s and is still
in flux.

juris is the most
established and oldest German database also when it comes to court reports. It
currently holds over 930,000 decisions, about one third of which in full text.
It covers almost completely the decisions of the highest federal courts of the
past 20 or so years; older decisions are gradually being included. Juris case
records are prepared at the federal courts. Lower courts are requested to
report decisions to the federal courts’ documentation departments, which select
the decisions to be included in the juris database system. In addition, these
departments evaluate 630 journals and compilations of court decisions. Juris
also references case citations in essays and articles, and indexes discussions
of decisions and judgments. Information regarding the documentation centers and
a list of journals complete with scope of coverage evaluated for court
decisions can be found here.

The approx, 350,000 –
400,000 cases offered through Beck-online
originate either from the journals it provides online or, more recently, from
direct cooperation with the courts.

Legios holds some 420,000
court decisions based on the print journals and case reporters it licenses,
among them some of the major titles such as BGHZ and BGHSt from Heymanns
publishers.

LexisNexis
Recht
currently offers over 520,000 cases, about 450,000 of which in full text.

The highest courts, as well as a
number of courts at the lower level, are now making the full text of more
recent decisions accessible for free on their homepages (cf. below).

Finding decisions is sometimes not
easy, even with improved access thanks to free Internet pages and extensive
online collections such as the ones in juris and other databases. Court
decisions passed prior to the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany,
which may still be relevant today, can only be found in juris, which provides
access to the decisions published in RGZ and RGSt. Looking for other references
the researcher will depend on these being referred to in commentaries or other
legal literature. Another problem is that juris does not sufficiently cover a
large portion of court decisions from the lower courts, or does not provide the
full text of decisions. The only option then is to order such decisions
directly from the courts. This requires the case number and date to be known.

Increasingly, courts offer a case
ordering service by e-mail via their homepages (e.g., the Federal Court of Justice, the Federal Labor Court, the Federal Tax Court). Publishers
sometimes provide the full text of decisions for a small fee. Some courts such
as the Federal Court of Justice and the Federal Labor Court have established a
subscription service and, for a fee, mail out all their decisions in print or
on disk. The names of the parties in a case are usually removed before mailing
or posting on the Internet.

·OLG
Report. OLGR. Köln: Otto Schmidt, [different starting dates depending on the
court]. A journal issued by region, which publishes decisions of the higher
regional court of Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamm, Köln, Berlin, Bayerisches
Oberlandesgericht, München/Bamberg/Nürnberg, Bremen/Hamburg/Schleswig,
Celle/Braunschweig/Oldenburg, Koblenz/Saarbrücken/Zweibrücken, Karlsruhe/Stuttgart,
Brandenburg/Dresden/Jena/Naumburg/Rostock. (Also available on CD-ROM published
once a year.) Its free Web site
publishes the headnotes of the most recent higher regional court decisions by
field of law. (online in Legios)

Major Commercial Case
Reporters:

·Federal
Court of Justice (BGH) Cases:

Lindenmaier, Fritz/Möhring Philipp (founders). Nachschlagewerk des
Bundesgerichtshofs. LM. München: C.H. Beck, 1961- [various bound short editions
and looseleaf series starting from 1961] – this looseleaf service has
been discontinued as of recently. beck-onlinein 2004 put it online starting 2003 with an updating service for
subscribers including annotations.

·caselaw.de, a database with more than 23,600
cases of the German Federal Court of Justice (starting from Sept. 1998) and
approx. 2,000 cases of the Federal Constitutional Court (starting from Jan.
1998)

German law and its development is
documented by a wealth of legal literature. Commentaries, handbooks, textbooks,
journals and dictionaries are often the first tools used by the legal
researcher to obtain an overview of the field or to find leads to laws and
cases. Brief descriptions and lists of some of the major ones will be given
below.

5.1 Commentaries (Kommentare)

This typical genre of German legal
literature is central to practice-oriented legal research and often the source
to which the legal researcher turns first. It provides commentary section by
section on a particular law with extensive footnoting and references to cases
and court decisions, articles, monographs and other legal literature. The text
of the law is usually included as well. By explaining and interpreting the text
of statutes and linking to relevant cases and court decisions, commentaries
link together two major sources of law. There are commentaries for both federal
and state laws, however, by far not for all of them. In such cases one needs to
examine if and to what extent such laws are considered in other commentaries.
Ideally, commentaries, aside from pointing to cases, including those not
otherwise published in databases or case reporters, also make reference to
subordinate legislation, administrative rules and regulations and legislative
materials as well as applicable EU legislation pertaining to the law they are
annotating. They are often known by the names of their authors, rather than by
their actual titles, for example Palandt as the major short commentary
on the German Civil Code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch) or Baumbach/Hueck,
the commentary on the German Commercial Code (Handelsgesetzbuch).

Commentaries appear in two major
formats: Kurzkommentare (hand commentaries) and Grosskommentare
(large commentaries). Published as single-volume sets, hand commentaries are
strongly geared to practice needs and are re-edited more frequently. They are
much more current than the multi-volume large commentaries which may take up to
a decade to be published in their entirety. Some of the major hand commentaries
are re-edited regularly, such as Palandt which appears each year in
December (with major amendments recently being downloadable from the homepage
of the publisher, C.H. Beck). Unfortunately, commentaries are not re-edited
with the same regularity in all fields of law. Even hand commentaries may take
years to be updated. This is because frequent changes in the law make it very
difficult to keep commentaries up to date. Some publishers take account of this
situation by publishing an increasing number of commentaries in looseleaf
format.

In recent years commercial
providers have made a growing number of commentaries available online. All the
major legal databases offer at least some online commentaries. These are
updated more frequently, thus alleviating the situation in the print market
described above.

Special mention in this context
should be made of C.H. Beck publishers. Already the market leader as far as
print products are concerned, Beck-online
with currently about 180 online commentaries is top of the list here too.

The other legal database providers
make available online commentaries as well:

·Münchener Kommentar zum
Bürgerlichen Gesetzbuch. 5th edition. München: C.H. Beck, 2006- (published since
the late 1970s; each edition completed after 3-4 years; appears now in 11
volumes with an additional looseleaf volume for current developments). (also
available online in beck-online).

Standard documents, forms, and
standard contracts are published in the German legal book market as
single-volume editions on a particular subject of law and as multi-volume sets
covering a wider range of subjects with detailed tables of contents and indexes
providing adequate overview. Some of these books not only offer standard
documents and forms but also annotations and short commentary as an additional
aid for the user. Aside from one- and multi-volume bound sets, there are entire
serials, with each of the volumes dealing with one particular subject. Another
form in which this type of legal literature is published is a combined
monograph of the subject and pertinent forms complete with explanations.
Handbooks and textbooks, too, sometimes provide standard documents and forms on
the subject they are treating. This type of legal literature, largely the works
which until now were on the market as print versions, is meanwhile available in
the major legal databases as well. A number of Web sites offer contract forms,
some free and some for a fee. These include www.jusline.de
and www.redmark.de.

·Münchener
Vertragshandbuch. 6th edition. München: C.H. Beck, 2005- (in 6 volumes; new edition
started every four years and completed within two years; extensive coverage of
corporate law, commercial and business law incl. international business law,
civil law).

There are over 600 legal journals
in Germany published by a range of commercial vendors and covering every field
of law. Unlike, for example, in the US, they are not written by law schools.
They usually consist of three parts: scholarly treatises, cases, statutory laws
and regulations, and documentation. In addition, they publish essays,
discussions of cases, book reviews and information on developments of the law.
As mentioned in paragraph 4. above, some journals specialize
in publishing court decisions. They also give more extensive coverage than
other journals of decisions of lower courts.

A special form of publication for
essays is what is known as Festschriften. These are compilations of
scholarly essays, usually on a certain topic, devoted to the anniversaries of
important personalities or institutions. They are generally published in
single-volume sets.

Access Tools:

Essays and articles can be accessed
electronically through juris, which indexes
over 600 legal journals as well as the contents of Festschriften and
yearbooks. For copyright reasons, juris does not provide the full text of these
articles and essays, but only abstracts and citations. However, juris has
entered into contractual relations with a number of publishers and, through its
own databases, now does offer 31 journals in full text.

Journals can also be accessed
through a number of other databases. These include beck-online, Legios, and LexisNexis
Recht.

beck-online has expanded its contents
rapidly over the past few years and now holds some 75 journals in full text.
Most of them are C.H. Beck publications with some journals such as
Betriebs-Berater licensed from other publishers as well.

The Karlsruher Juristische
Bibliographie is another major access tool which indexes German legal
literature since 1965. It is published monthly and includes books and essays,
including those from Festschriften and anthologies, as well as doctoral
theses on legal topics. It is arranged by subject and, under each subject, by
author, and has annual indexes.

NJW Leitsatzkartei auf CD-ROM, published by C.H.
Beck on CD-ROM, is a journal index with four annual updates, including
headnotes of court reports and article abstracts of an estimated over 600,000
documents from 170 legal journals since 1981 (with 20,000 documents added every
year) searchable by section, court, date, case number, author, and keywords.
This journal index is also part of beck-online.

Fundhefte, published by C.H.
Beck, are specialized bibliographies for certain fields of law (such as public
law and civil law, indexing the literature and important cases in that field
(published with one year’s delay). They appear annually and index their content
after quite some delay. They are mentioned here for the sake of completeness as
their importance has diminished greatly over the past few years.

Kuselit-R, published by Kuselit
Verlag, is a bibliography of legal literature with more than 2 million index
records from over 750 journals, yearbooks, monographies, Festschriften,
and looseleaf services, available as an online
service in combination with an annual CD-ROM. The database is updated twice
a week. Festschriften from 1862 up until 1996 can be accessed through a
ten-volume set Bibliography of Legal Festschriften Titles and Contents. Bibliographie juristischer
Festschriften und Festschriftenbeiträge. (also on CD-ROM) edited by Helmut
Dau and published by Verlag Müller, Karlsruhe/Verlag Runge, Bielefeld/Verlag
Arno Spitz, Berlin/BWV Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag between 1962 and 1999. Kuselit offers a free
journal contents service delivered twice a week.

As full text is a frequent problem
with databases, obtaining articles and also doctoral theses, extracts from
books and other materials is facilitated by document delivery services.
Prominent here is Subito, the document
delivery service of the German library unions, which covers a large number of
state and university libraries and, for a fee, provides copies from journals
and magazines, books, doctoral theses, etc. by fax, mail or e-mail.

·Bundessteuerblatt
(BStBl).Bonn: Stollfuß, 1951-
(available online from 1992 for registered subscribers of the CD-ROM and
offering free guest access to a restricted number of issues). Also Makrolog
- Recht für Deutschlandoffers online access to
the full texts of BStBl I and II complete from 1951, as well as of BStBl III
with tax rulings from 1951 to 1967.

·LexisNexis Recht with currently 15 journals in
full text (indexing and providing abstracts of 170).

·juris with currently 33 journals in full text
(indexing and providing abstracts of 630).

·GENIOS German Business Information - merger of
the two major German providers (GBI and Genios) of news and business
information with over 800 sources from 250 publishers and other content
partners with ca. 4 legal and tax journals and six legal e-books.

Forms of citation may vary from
one publication or author to another. The following are the major hard-and-fast
rules for citations to laws, cases, monographs, commentaries, and journal
articles.

German statutes, journals, case
reporters, law gazettes, and also courts are cited by their abbreviations.
Abbreviations for statutes are determined by the legislator, those for journals
often by the publisher. Access to abbreviation indexes are therefore important
for the legal researcher.

Common forms of citation and
abbreviation are summarized in Kirchner/Butz:. Abkürzungsverzeichnis der
Rechtssprache.
5th
edition. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003.

The Federal Court of Justice
offers a site
(free of charge) that can be helpful as a first port of call. It primarily
contains abbreviations not yet contained in the print title above.
Alternatively, one can use commentaries and major handbooks, which usually
feature extensive abbreviation indexes on their particular subject. It cannot,
however, be taken for granted at all that abbreviations are used uniformly.
There may be completely divergent ones depending on the source one uses.

juris, by and large, sticks to the
official abbreviations, but sometimes, for IT or administrative reasons, uses
divergent ones.

Statutes are divided into sections
and subsections, and the latter into sentences. Sections are usually referred
to by the section sign (§) and subsections by Abs. (for the German word Absatz)
and Arab numerals. The citation to section 5 subsection 3, first sentence of
the German Limited Liability Company Act would look as follows: § 1
Abs. 1 Satz 1 GmbHG. Citations to Bundesgesetzblatt and Bundessteuerblatt
as official sources of legislation include the source abbreviation, part
number, year and page as follows: BGBl I 1999, 205 or BStBl II 2000,
103

Citations to commentaries may not
be entirely uniform, but usually include the founder (who is treated like an
author), the author of the particular passage cited (or the title of the
commentary and the author of a particular passage) and the section and annotation
number (in rare cases, page numbers are mentioned as well). Sometimes, if the
reference to the section commented on is obvious, the section itself is not
mentioned. Some commentaries give recommendations as to the form of citation to
use, usually by an example, on the back of the title page.

Cases are usually referred to by
citation to the publication with volume and page number (BVerfGE 40, 46)
or the court, publication and page number (LG Augsburg, NJW 2000, 2363)
or the court, date of decision, case number, and source reference (OLG
Frankfurt a.M., Urt. v. 7.12.1999 - Z Ss 259/99 -, NJW 2001, 908).
Indication of the court, case number, date of court decision and source
reference would be desirable, but is not at all common.

Monographs are referred to by the
name and first name (or at least initial) of the author, title, edition (if
applicable), place and year of publication. In German usage, the name of the
publisher is not part of the citation (e.g., Tipke, Klaus, Steuerrecht: Ein
systematischer Grundriß, 12. völlig überarb. Aufl., Köln, 1989).

Journal articles are cited by
author and title plus reference to the journal (usually the abbreviation), year
of publication and page number (e.g., Hufen, F., In dubio pro dignitate. In:
NJW 2001, 849 or sometimes in article footnotes just by author, e.g., Steffen,
NJW 1996, 1581). With longer articles, reference is often made to the page
relevant to a particular subject.

A bibliography of translations of
German statutes has been published by the Press and Information Office of the
German Federal Government. Volume 1 deals with translations into English (Presse-und
Informationsamt der Bundesregierung. Auslandsabteilung. Übersetzungen
deutscher Gesetzestexte. Eine Bibliographie. Translations of German Laws. A
Bibliography. Vol. 1 English. Bonn: April 1997.)

Pointers to English translations
of German laws, cases and other legal resources in English can be found on the
following Web sites:

The Federal Ministry of Justice
and juris in their free Statutes on the Internet portal offer the German
Civil Code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch – BGB, cf above at 1.)
in English
translation. Available so far are Books 1 and 2; Books 3-5 are stated to
follow by February 2008.

Often, translations of laws are
also provided on the homepages of government ministries and agencies (for a
list click here).

Mention should be made here of the
German Law Accessible serial by C.H. Beck publishers with introductions
to various fields of German law in English. They also include English
translations of German laws:

·Adolff,
J. Public Company Takeovers in Germany. 2002

·Corino,
C. Energy Law in Germany. 2003

·Gottwald,
P. Family and Succession Law in Germany. 2001

·Horn,
N. Public Procurement in Germany. 2001

·Klett,
A. Intellectual Property Law in Germany. 2008 (planned to be published in April 2008)

·Krause,
H. German Securities Regulation. 2001

·Lingemann,
S. Employment and Labour Law in Germany. 2nd ed. 2008

·Müller,
Klaus J. The GmbH. A Guide to the German Limited Liability Company. 2006

·Reimann,
M. Introduction to German Law. 2nd ed. 2006

·Rützel,
S. Commercial Dispute Resolution in Germany. 2005

·Wirth,
G. Corporate Law in Germany. 2004 (currently out of print)

8. Overview of Fee-based Legal
Databases

The major legal databases
available in Germany are described in some more detail below. All of them are
fee-based. Their price models vary widely, including different types of
flat-rate and pay-per document models. Their contents partly overlap. All of
them seek collaboration with publishers and other content providers to expand
their data and product range.

8.1 juris - Legal Information
System of the Federal Republic of Germany (DVD and online):

·The “oldest” legal
database in Germany, juris was
established in the 1970s by the Federal Ministry of Justice, and privatized in
the 1980s. The majority share is still held by the German federal government,
the other shares were bought a few years ago by Netherlands-based publisher
sdu.

·Evaluates over 600
legal journals to record cases and case citations and to index articles with
abstracts and bibliographic references.

·Cooperation with publishers such as Stollfuß-Verlag,
DAV and Hüthig/Jehle/Rehm, as well as government authorities such as the Federal
Ministry of Justice to set up specialized portals on public and tax law as well
as free internet portals.
Statutes on the Internet Portal
or various databases of federal and state administrative rules and regulations.

·Increasing focus on
the development of specialized modules and portals, in part complemented by
sources of external vendors, to cover different fields of law and attorney
needs.

·Role as record
keeper of laws and cases continues to be essential and unchallenged.

Contents:

·Largest, yet not
complete German case collection (approx. 930,000 records, of which 30 percent
in full text), as well as EU cases based on the EU databases. Cases of German
courts are increasingly delivered by the courts directly.

·All federal laws
including their current and all historical consolidated versions since the
launch of the database in the 1970s:

·The Law Portal (Gesetzesportal)
maintained by juris as a separate fee-based service in cooperation with
Bundesanzeiger Verlag publishers covers the current and historical versions of
all federal laws, the full text the Federal Law Gazette, Parts I and II as well
as the printed matters of the Bundestag and Bundesrat starting from the 15th
parliamentary term. It also records the documents of the legislative processes.

·Complete coverage of
the state laws of all federal states except for Bremen and Berlin, with
previous versions from the time juris started to make these available (one to
four years back).

·EU laws based on the
EU’s own databases, including national laws implementing EU directives.

·Double taxation agreements, officially
binding collective bargaining agreements, contracting regulations, tax
administrative rules and regulations of the federation and of the states of
Bavaria, Schleswig-Holstein and Rhineland Palatinate. Growing number of
books and journals in full text (as per the date of this publication 50 and 31,
respectively) through cooperation with other publishers as well as in-house
publication (currently 12), both electronic and in print.

·Praxis-Report, a current awareness
service for a variety of fields of law with select annotated cases and links to
their full text.

·Beside legal
content juris provides access to business information as well, i.e.
Creditreform company profiles including proof of good standing, and
Bundesanzeiger data including court and other public notices, annual reports
and central commercial register extracts.

The second major legal
database beside juris, it was launched in 2001 and is primarily based on the
publications of, and operated by, C.H. Beck publishers as the market leader of
legal print literature in Germany.

Beck-online’s hallmark is the high percentage of full text
from all forms of legal publications making it an electronic library in the
true sense of the word. The database consists of a large number of modules,
each pulling together the legal sources for one particular field of law.

The German legal
division of the international database host, LexisNexis Recht is considered to
be the third major legal database provider in Germany.

Contents:

·Approx. 530,000
cases, of which 450,000 in full text.

·8,000 federal
statutes and rules of law plus EU laws and administrative rules and
regulations, and the statutes of all federal states. According to Lexis, all
current laws and their previous versions are now included.

·Abstracts of over
180 legal journals from all fields of law indexed since 2003, and 16 licensed
journals in full text.

·26 licensed and over
100 in-house commentaries.

·Auxiliary materials
such as standard form texts, checklists, calculation aids.

·Beyond the legal
database, LexisNexis hosts business and news information.

8.4 Legios:

Legios was first
established in 2001 by Otto Schmidt, Carl Heymanns and Handelsblatt publishers.
Since November 2006 Otto Schmidt publishers have been the sole owners. The
products of former co-owners and other content partners have remained part of
the database portfolio of contents. Otto Schmidt and Heymanns are considered to
be major competitors of C.H. Beck. The availability of important journals and
commentaries online makes Legios a key contendor in the market.

Contents:

·Some 420,000 cases,
reported in the journals and more than ten case reporters contained in the
database, including such flagship publications as BGHZ, BGHSt and others.

Awareness and news services gain growing importance
in keeping abreast of current legal developments. The federal government, the
courts and other authorities and institutions, as well as legal database providers
and publishers offer a variety of free newsletters and news tickers, and, with
the advent of Web 2.0, RSS news feeds, podcasts and blogs.

9.1 RSS Feeds

RSS feeds require a reader which can usually be
downloaded from the respective websites.

·juris PraxisReport, a
fee-based current awareness service for several fields of law is delivered
weekly or biweekly featuring current cases with annotations from renowned legal
experts (database subscription).

·Newsletters by Bundesanzeiger
publishers: free four-weekly service covering various fields of law, including
newsletters on current legislative projects and new federal laws in Germany and
in the European Union.

·Gesetze im Internet (Statutes on
the Internet): joint project by the German Federal Ministry of Justice and
juris GmbH) listing consolidated current versions of the major federal laws and
an English translation of the German Civil Code.

·Marktplatz-Recht: a gateway to legal
information by Hans Soldan GmbH in association with the German Federal Bar
Association, the German Lawyers Association and the Federal Notaries
Association.

·ViFa Recht: Virtuelle Fachbibliothek (ViFa) Recht (Virtual Law Library) is a portal for online legal
research offering easy access to legal information via the internet regardless
of location. A project launched in December 2005, it currently allows for 27
select databases to be searched by means of a metasearch. Moreover, research is
possible in science-related internet sources. There are various options for
searching the law-related holdings of Berlin State Library as well as legal journals
online and in print format. Other features include a searchable overview of legal
databases, and references to legal bibliographies in print and online.
Also available is a Metasearch
in English across 27 national and foreign databases).

·Justizportal des Bundes und
der Länder (German Federal and State Justice Portal): The Federal Ministry of
Justice and the state justice administrations provide easy and uniform access
through this portal to their e-government services and a variety of information
sources including the Federal Lawyers Registry, a court registry, brochures,
information on electronic legal communications, forms, various online services
such as insolvency annnouncements, electronic land registry inspections, etc.

·Globalex: a Web site
of foreign, comparative and international law guides maintained at New York
University School of Law, including Germany with links to statutes, cases, and
legal authorities, institutions and organizations.